Exploring the connection between relational capital and female entrepreneurs

.Among intangible assets of contemporary companies, relational capital (RC) is a relevant strategic asset as well as a dimension of intellectual capital. In this scenario, micro-enterprises are key drivers of economic growth, and woman entrepreneurs are key developers of these businesses. So, the purpose of this study is to carry out a literature review analyzing how RC contributes to the startup phase of women-owned micro-enterprises. Another purpose is to understand whether and to what extent the studies conducted so far have addressed some issues such as “How and why women entrepreneurs use relational capital? What are the main benefits they get using relational capital? What are the main obstacles they face?” A literature search on Scopus was conducted, using a set of selected keywords. Scopus was used since it has quality publications. Selected papers were analyzed and classified, in an attempt to identify the main topics and results obtained from the research and analysis carried out so far. The contribution of the present research is to make the international literature focus on the connection between gender studies and RC. Particularly, the literature review emphasizes the topic proposed as emerging issue, which gives us the opportunity to identify new trends and future directions of research. This paper aims to advance knowledge and practice in the area of gender and management, using RC based on empirical research, theoretical developments, practice and current issues. The main evidences are related to a better understanding of the debate on gender and relational capital, considering that female entrepreneurship is central to the development and welfare of economies. Deep knowledge on how women entrepreneurs manage business relation can contribute to improving the effectiveness policies that promote the participation of female entrepreneurs in the economy

Consistency and stability of risk indicators: The case of road infrastructures

Over the last decade, the World Road Association – PIARC and several European research projects, among which Ecoroads, have encouraged a promising reflection on risk analysis methods, acceptance criteria and safety practices applied to the road system. The goal of this research activity is the definition of best practice for safety analysis and management to be applied to network TERN (Trans European Road Network). Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA) provides much information on safety management. Nevertheless, the potential fragility of the method, stochastic uncertainties (both parameters and models), and ethical aspect of criteria must be adequately analyzed. This paper focuses on all these aspects, assessing the reliability of QRA due to modeling errors and statistical errors, and assessing the statistical consistency of Risk Indicators of QRA

Risk assessment, and carcinogen mutagen for workers potentially exposed in the research laboratories of “Sapienza” University of Rome for Health Surveillance

The following work is meant to represent the evaluation of risk factors for the health of exposed workers, arising from the management of carcinogenic and mutagenic substances, through the use of algorithms. In some places of work as a research laboratory, it is more suitable a theoretical and practical methodology (algorithm) which allows a "timely" exposure assessment. The methodology developed and used is able to determine the level of risk of exposure due to a single agent and / or to more agents. Results obtained by the algorithm, have shown an higher exposure to 1 for formaldehyde (Lcanc = 1.32), while for acrylamide results obtained shows a lower exposure to 1 (Lcanc = 0.528). Although the overall exposure level of studied workers higher value to 1 (Lcanc= 1.848), the Occupational Medicine Centre of "Sapienza" - University of Rome, in agreement with the position taken by the Italian Society of Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene applies health surveillance even in the presence of potential health risk reducing it among the general protection measures the health and safety of workers

Exponentially Fitted Discontinuous Galerkin Schemes for Singularly Perturbed Problems

New discontinuous Galerkin schemes in mixed form are introduced for symmetric elliptic problems of second order. They exhibit reduced connectivity with respect to the standard ones. The modifications in the choice of the approximation spaces and in the stabilization term do not spoil the error estimates. These methods are then used for designing new exponentially fitted schemes for advection dominated equations. The presented numerical tests show the good performances of the proposed schemes.Fil: Lombardi, Ariel Luis. Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento. Instituto de Ciencias; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Matemática; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Pietra, Paola. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. Istituto di Matematica Applicata e Tecnologie Informatiche; Itali

Correlation Between the Transdermal Permeation of Ketoprofen and its Solubility in Mixtures of a pH 6.5 Phosphate Buffer and Various Solvents

The passage of a drug through the skin is directly proportional to the concentration of the drug in the donor phase and to the permeability coefficient constant Kp. Kp is determined essentially by two factors: the dissolution of the drug in the stratum corneum (measured by the partition coefficient P) and the diffusion in the same stratum (measured by the diffusion constant D). In our study, several saturated solutions of ketoprofen in mixtures of a pH 6.5 phosphate buffer and various co-solvents were studied to find correlations between the solubility of the ketoprofen in the mixtures and its permeation parameters in in vitro permeation studies with Franz cells. The results show that D does not change in the different mixtures; the diffusion of the drug into the stratum corneum is not influenced by the presence of the co-solvents, whereas the partition coefficient is strongly influenced. In particular, Kp and P were found to be inversely proportional to solubility, meaning that when the co-solvent increases the solubility, the partition of the drug and consequently Kp decrease. These findings were confirmed in some developed gels, and the developed gels were found to enhance the ketoprofen permeation with respect to the formulation in a commercial Fastum gel

When vicarious learning rewards the originating firm: Exploring the learning opportunities available to the licensor

Why should companies engage in licensing-out? While conventional wisdom mostly focuses on the financial and commercial benefits available to the licensor, this paper points to the learning opportunities entailed in licensing agreements. We develop an exploratory study built around a longitudinal cross-industry database of 558 licensing deals and we apply the vicarious learning framework to analyze the learning opportunities exploited by the licensor, as a result of engaging with a particular licensee in the first place. We investigate the licensor-licensee dyads on several dimensions, capturing their profiles and the different learning opportunities exploited; we also compare dyads that invert their role in a subsequent round to dyads that do not to understand whether there are difference in terms of learning patterns. Findings offer several insights consistent with a learning scenario, thus prompting further empirical research

Automatic Abdominal Organ Segmentation from CT images

In the recent years a great deal of research work has been devoted to the development of semi-automatic and automatic techniques for the analysis of abdominal CT images. Some of the current interests are the automatic diagnosis of liver, spleen, and kidney pathologies and the 3D volume rendering of the abdominal organs. The first and fundamental step in all these studies is the automatic organs segmentation, that is still an open problem. In this paper we propose our fully automatic system that employs a hierarchical gray level based framework to segment heart, bones (i.e. ribs and spine), liver and its blood vessels, kidneys, and spleen. The overall system has been evaluated on the data of 100 patients, obtaining a good assessment both by visual inspection by three experts, and by comparing the computed results to the boundaries manually traced by experts

Methodology for the identification of economic, environmental and health criteria for road noise mitigation

Abstract The aim of the paper is to define a method for evaluating infrastructural interventions for the mitigation of noise generated by roads based on multi-criteria analysis which considers a series of parameters (environmental, social, economic and health) that could give broader evaluations than just economic convenience. The research develops a guideline based on an already known methodology applied in other fields, which has been adapted to the above-mentioned topic: the multi-criteria analysis. The decision to use this method originates from an in-depth study of the state of the art regarding the issue of noise pollution related to transport infrastructures in Italy and at a European level. The Multi-criteria Analysis proved to be the best solution both for completeness and versatility. In particular, the developed methodology uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process as a multi-criteria analysis method. Through its hierarchical structure, this method offers a comparison not only between possible interventions, but also between the same criteria taken into consideration for the choice of the best intervention. The model was validated by analyzing a real noise mitigation project on an Italian main road. The results showed how the model could represent a valid support to decision-making processes

Design and evaluation of buccal adhesive hydrocortisone acetate (HCA) tablets.

Many studies have shown that topical buccal therapy with steroid anti-inflammatory drugs is useful in controlling ulcerative and inflammatory mucosal diseases. This local treatment is based on the concept that a high activity of steroids can be produced at the site of administration and, at the same time, the degree of systemic side effects can be minimized or avoided. In this study we developed a new formulation consisting of a mucoadhesive tablet formulation for buccal administration of hydrocortisone acetate (HCA). Three types of tablet were developed containing three mucoadhesive components: hydroxypropylmethyl cellulose (Methocel K4M), carboxyvinyl polymer (Carbopol 974P), and polycarbophyl (Noveon AA1); the first polymer is a cellulose derivative, the others are both polyacrylic acid derivatives. For each of those, three tablet batches were produced changing the quantity of the mucoadhesive component (10, 20, and 30%), resulting in 9 different formulations. The compatibility of HCA with all excipients using Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) was assessed. Tablets were manufactured by wet granulation followed by compression. Technological controls on granulates (Hausner index, Carr index, granulometry and Karl-Fischer percentage humidity) and tablets (thickness, diameter, friability, hardness, uniformity of content, weigh uniformity and dissolution kinetic) were carried out. Mucoadhesion properties, ex vivo permeability through porcine buccal mucosa, in vivo behavior and compliance were evaluated. Technological controls have demonstrated that the increase in the (percentage) of mucoadhesive causes an increase in granulometry followed by a reduction in the granulate flowability, however all the tablets have given satisfactory technological results and conformed to the 3rd Ed. European Pharmacopoeia specifications. Mucoadhesion, ex vivo permeability and in vivo behavior results notably differed among tablets, depending on the quality and quantity of the mucoadhesive component. An overall comparison of results showed the tablets containing Carbopol 20% resulted to be the best formulation among those developed

About correlation between centre of pressure, trunk and head sways during quiet upright stance.

In order to better understand the mechanisms of orthostatic balance, centre of pressure (CoP), trunk, and head sways were simultaneously measured during quiet upright stance, and compared to each other, looking for possible correlation. Methods - A total of 16 healthy young adults served as subjects. They were asked to keep orthostatic position for 120 s, once with open and once with closed eyes. COP sway was measured by force platform, trunk oscillation by inclinometers placed at the sternum level, trunk and head angular velocities by miniature gyroscopes, placed at the sternum and the skull vertex, respectively. Cross-correlation functions were used to compare sways measured at different levels to each other. In particular, antero-posterior (AP) and medio-lateral (ML) components of CoP sway were correlated to the homologous components of trunk oscillation, and AP and ML trunk oscillation velocities to the homologous head oscillation velocities. Results – Clear and consistent positive correlation was found between trunk and head sways. In 83% of cases, cross-correlation functions presented one sharp peak near the origin, and much lower values elsewhere. Mean correlation delays in the different conditions (open or closed eyes) and directions (AP and ML) weren't significantly different from 0 at p=0.05 (t-test). Cross-correlation functions computed inside a 20 s sliding window showed that correlation was kept all along the test duration. CoP-trunk correlation was much less clear. Cross-correlation peaks as sharp as those observed between trunk and head velocities could never be observed. However, in many instances the two sways did show almost parallel time courses. This could either extend to almost the whole test duration or be limited to shorter periods, and was much more frequent in ML than in AP plane, where, in general, the two sways appeared to be uncorrelated. in a few instances, in the AP plane they semed to be phase opposed. Discussion – Sharp cross-correlation peaks with almost no delay show that trunk and head moved almost synchronously, like one rigid body. This was consistent with the fact that in either plane (AP or ML) and vision condition (eyes open or closed) the sway velocity distributions of trunk and head were similar to each other, and the corresponding average velocity ranges were not significantly different from one another at p=0.05 (t-test). Poorer correlation between CoP and trunk sways is a likely consequence of the presence of the hip joint, and the inertia of the trunk-arms-head system, linked to this joint. This makes the trunk over the hip intrinsically less steady than the head over the neck. Interestingly enough, CoP-trunk correlation was better in ML plane than in AP one, and this may easily be explained by the different stiffness of the hip joint in the two planes, due to the different geometry. Different degrees and modes of correlation between CoP and trunk sway suggest the use of different balance strategies. It is also possible that the two sways convey different, maybe complementary, information about balance control, and it could possibly make sense to consider also trunk movements in the diagnostic approach to balance control. This conclusion is consistent with previous suggestions by different authors